Critic Reviews

To be fair, Medal of Honor: Warfighter is not going to change the face of the modern day military shooters but does that mean that it doesn't exceed its predecessor or excel at its own agenda? No. The game from start to finish was incredibly enjoyable with a good enough story to make you want to play it again and a multiplayer that will supply hours upon hours of excitement and gameplay. If you are not a fan of military shooters then Warfighter probably won't change your perspective on them, but if you are looking for something that is a little different and will supply a new freshness into the already saturated world of shooters, this may do the trick for you.

Overall, Medal of Honor: Warfighter is an excessively average game. In every way, it embodies the idea of “stereotypic”. If you look at the back of the box and imagine what this game will be like, you’ll probably be pretty spot on. It’s not going to surprise you in any way, and I don’t think it will really hook you either. It’s simply just a very short, very bland, and exceedingly average shooter.

Upon completing Medal of Honor: Warfighter's campaign, you are met with a heartfelt dedication impressing upon you the heroism of the men in uniform the game depicts. The attempt at sincere emotion is commendable--but it rings hollow, coming as it does at the end of a bog-standard military shooter that celebrates the killing of hundreds. The battlefield fantasy itself offers a few surprises, but they're crowded out of your psyche by the indifferent hours of shooting and military chatter that surround them.

Upon completing Medal of Honor: Warfighter's campaign, you are met with a heartfelt dedication impressing upon you the heroism of the men in uniform the game depicts. The attempt at sincere emotion is commendable--but it rings hollow, coming as it does at the end of a bog-standard military shooter that celebrates the killing of hundreds. The battlefield fantasy itself offers a few surprises, but they're crowded out of your psyche by the indifferent hours of shooting and military chatter that surround them.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter feels like it is trying too hard to get a slice of the lucrative CoD pie, but the package never quite manages to get up to snuff. It is average in almost every department, and if you choose to play without the day one patch and graphics install it devolves into a buggy broken mess, though even with the optimum requirements it fails to start up to its rivals. Man down.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter feels unpolished. It's a slew of great ideas mashed together in a way that doesn't give any of them time to truly shine, rushed out to make a deadline that didn't do it any favors. While there's enjoyment to be had here, it is fleeting and often devolves rapidly into frustration and boredom. I feel bad saying that, because the folks at Danger Close seemed intensely passionate about their work and there's simply so much potential in here, but it clearly needed more time if it was to develop into anything truly unique and compelling. Instead, it seems as though a bunch of good-to-excellent parts were put together and the result is significantly less than one would expect their sum to be.

To play Medal of Honor Warfighter's single-player campaign is to become Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, only instead of knowing exactly where Ned Ryerson will be and what he'll say every single day for eternity ("I did the whistling belly button trick at the high school talent show. Bing!") I knew every exploding twist and slow-motion turn the levels were going to make before they actually made it. Warfighter isn't a bad modern military shooter, it's just that there's very little of its seven hours of terrorist-shooting that doesn't make me feel like I've played it before.

The uninspired single-player campaign, uneven multiplayer execution, and rampant presence of glitches undermine Medal of Honor: Warfighter’s efforts to join the Tier 1 of military shooters. If Danger Close keeps executing this poorly, this once-loved series may be dangerously close to being put in a casket.

I'd like to see Danger Close take a real, genuine crack at the thoughtful war shooter they clearly want to make, because its repeated attempts at a weak Call of Duty knock-off isn't going to win over hearts and minds. Medal of Honor: Warfighter never stood a chance, and its deep schism between intended tone and actual design feels even more comically tragic now than it did with the original reboot two years ago. This is a bland, buggy and often boring title, one that belies the intentions of its developers and leaves the much-maligned modern shooter looking worse as a result.

There's been a backlash brewing for some time against the bombastic direction military shooters have taken, but it would be wrong to assume that Medal of Honor: Warfighter is simply the game unlucky enough to bear its brunt. The truth is far simpler and more depressing: it's just not that good.

Years from now, when we look back at this console generation, Medal of Honor: Warfighter will be remembered as the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back -- if it's remembered at all. It's the definition of a lazy cash-grab that doesn't try to do anything but emulate what came before it and it does so badly. There is fun to be had here, but it's nothing you can't find for a third of the price elsewhere.

As you gain ranks, you'll unlock everything from scopes and stocks to magazines and muzzles, but too few of the upgrades have an appreciable impact on performance, and the clunky interface makes experimenting with different parts a pain. The real threat to Warfighter's longevity, though, is how its multiplayer maps feel like patchworks of arbitrary buildings and debris instead of bona fide real-world strongholds. Without a palpable sense of place, these battlegrounds never give you enough reason to choose this particular mix of gunmetal and grit over any other. Combined with a weak campaign, that makes the new Medal of Honor more of a casualty than a killer in a marketplace already crowded with full-featured crowd-pleasers.

The uninspired single-player campaign, uneven multiplayer execution, and rampant presence of glitches undermine Medal of Honor: Warfighter’s efforts to join the Tier 1 of military shooters. If Danger Close keeps executing this poorly, this once-loved series may be dangerously close to being put in a casket.

If you don't have a complete plan of attack, the mission will result in a critical failure. Warfighter isn't a total failure, but it's certainly not up to the standards of the international Tier 1 Operators it clings to.

In the end, Medal of Honor: Warfighter simply doesn’t feel like a product that was ready to ship. There are some good ideas here, and I think that with more time a team of capable developers--and I include the folks at Danger Close in that number--would possibly have allowed the concept to morph into a more worthwhile game. As-is, the title feels like a copy-paste job gone bad. You could certainly do worse than to give it a shot, but you also have enough superior options right now that your time is better spent elsewhere.

After all that's said and done, Medal of Honor: Warfighter is nothing more than a broken action game that falls way behind other shooters. With the impending release of Black Ops 2, gamers are bound to forget this title within months, if not weeks. Instead of expanding on a franchise and improving it, EA have created a glitchy and disappointing addition to its popular series, offering dreary characters, a boring plot and most of all predictably mediocre gameplay.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter is so deeply flawed that I have a hard time recommending it to anyone. The more subtle narrative and surprising variety of gameplay in the single player is a nice change of pace, but half of it is broken. The multiplayer, despite new wrinkles, isn’t enough to win many converts. The realistic sound and feedback of the weapons is also commendable, but they’re not enough to carry the game. Truthfully, more than anything else, Warfighter makes me more excited to see what the new Battlefield has to offer. This genre is too crowded to tolerate the sub-par effort EA has released in Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

Gorgeous visuals and high production values can only carry a poor experience so far. Expect to spend a lot of time waiting, watching, and wondering why you’re bothering to play at all during Medal of Honor Warfighter’s disappointing, confusing campaign. At its core, Warfighter is a functional shooter built on trite design ideas, but significant technical problems knock it below the realm of mediocrity. This isn’t just an upsetting sequel or me-too military shooter – Warfighter is disrespectful of your time and unwilling or unable to adapt to what’s been done better elsewhere.

War games can do dumb, and I'm OK with that. But dressing dumb up in the cloak of authenticity seems a dangerous line to cross. When you pretend to be saying something about ongoing real-world wars, but present a conflict of extremes with all the substance of air, the thought that anyone might take Warfighter seriously becomes a very queasy one. What it comes down to is an assumption that its audience is there to be fooled, and doesn't care anyway. That's what Warfighter feels like – a piece of propaganda.

It’s fitting that so much of Medal of Honor Warfighter’s script is composed of military acronyms, given that the entire game is shorthand for designs and concepts that have been done in other, overwhelmingly better military shooters. Warfighter is uninspired, underdeveloped, and completely profligate with the solemn potential of its core concept.

At its core, Warfighter is a functional shooter built on trite design ideas, but significant technical problems knock it below the realm of mediocrity. This isn’t just an upsetting sequel or me-too military shooter – Warfighter is disrespectful of your time and unwilling or unable to adapt to what’s been done better elsewhere.

There are some worthwhile components in Medal of Honor: Warfighter, but it feels cobbled together, a design-by-committee approximation of "AAA military shooter." The concept behind Warfighter is sound – particularly its attempt to personalize the internal conflict of a soldier – but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

While another six months in development wouldn’t have removed the lingering bad taste from one of the more tasteless marketing campaigns in recent memory – including tie-ins with the real-world manufacturers who make the in-game ordnance, and a branded tomahawk that was later removed from sale – it would have done much to help smooth out the kinks in a game where at least the multiplayer has genuine potential. Instead, what’s shipped is rushed, uninspired and cynical. Activision and Treyarch have questions of their own to answer in a few short weeks – chiefly whether a near-future setting will breathe life into a series many feel has grown stagnant – but EA and Danger Close have set them a very low bar indeed.